From his debut appearance as the central character in a disturbing episode of Atlanta to his
wildly mysterious arrival at the 2018 Emmy Awards ceremony, there's a lot we don't know
about Teddy Perkins.
Here's a look behind the scenes to help fill in the blanks.
Consistently surreal
"Teddy Perkins" might have been a standout episode of Atlanta, but as weird as it is,
it was fully in keeping with the eerie surrealism established in the world of the show.
Glover and his Atlanta team have never been afraid to tread toward the surreal in the
world of the show, there's a fuzziness on the boundaries of reality just outside the
camera frame.
"Oh s---, it's Justin Bieber!"
But the "Teddy Perkins" episode stands apart in the Atlanta universe, both in its unsettling
use of heavy whiteface makeup as a metaphor for the corrosive effects of fame and racism,
and as a Frankenstein's monster of cinematic references, many pulled from classic horror.
References aplenty
The episode starts off like a fairly normal Atlanta episode Lakeith Stanfield's Darius
rents a truck to pick up a free piano from a wealthy eccentric.
As soon as Darius arrives at Teddy Perkins' mansion, however, the tone of the episode
changes.
Darius is stepping into a horror movie, and even his wardrobe reflects that.
Director Hiro Murai told Vanity Fair that he wanted his outfit to evoke James Caan's
look in the 1990 film adaptation of Stephen King's Misery, a movie about a trapped and
infirm talent held hostage.
Sound familiar?
When Darius comes across Teddy's wheelchair-bound brother Benny in the basement, he's covered
in bandages and wearing sunglasses, just like the Invisible Man from the 1933 horror classic
of the same name.
And in another of the episode's classic horror movie references, there's shades of Psycho
when a relative who may or may not exist finally appears, also in a basement.
"Ah!"
There's a sly reference to another Lakeith Stanfield role in the modern-day horror classic
Get Out.
In Get Out, Stanfield plays Logan, a mind control/body swapping victim who's briefly
woken up by a camera flash in one of the tensest moments in a film full of them.
"Get out!
Yo, chill man, chill GET OUT.
Chill"
In the "Teddy Perkins" episode of Atlanta, Teddy takes Darius' photo suddenly with a
bright flash.
"I'm not a big photo person."
The most obvious cinematic reference, however, is the 1962 psychological thriller–horror
film Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
The film follows two sisters, one obsessed with her childhood fame as a vaudeville actor
and the other left paraplegic after an accident that she blames on her sister.
"You wouldn't be able to do these awful things to me if I weren't still in this chair!"
The Jackson connection
Visually, Teddy Perkins is most obviously inspired by Michael Jackson.
But Teddy doesn't just resemble the King of Pop: he tells Darius about his domineering
father with pride in his voice, explicitly comparing him to Michael's famously abusive
father, Joe Jackson.
Michael Jackson's brother Jermaine wrote a book largely defending the abuse they suffered
at their father's hands.
By combining Jermaine's defensiveness about his father with a nod to Michael's alleged
skin condition, it further confuses who Teddy Perkins is and makes the twist that Benny
is actually still alive hit even harder.
Joe Jackson isn't the only abusive father to get a shoutout in the episode; Teddy also
references Marvin Gaye Sr., father of singer Marvin Gaye.
Gaye was shot to death by his father, and Teddy's reference to him foreshadows the violent
ending of the episode.
So who is Teddy Perkins?
It might have taken at least a couple viewings before you realized it, but yes, that's definitely
Atlanta star and creator Donald Glover playing the role of Teddy Perkins, a bone-chilling
allegory for the perils of black fame in America.
The secret punchline of the entire episode, however, is that when the credits roll, it's
revealed that Teddy Perkins was played by "himself."
Teddy is presented as an entity singularly removed from Glover, something that remained
consistent even while the episode was filming, according to Derrick Haywood, the actor who
plays Benny.
As Haywood recalled,
"They were calling him Teddy, he acted as Teddy.
There was no Donald on set whatsoever."
Teddy's night out
The "Teddy Perkins" character actually showed up at the 2018 Emmys, even going so far as
to pose for pictures with Donald Glover, indicating that another actor got the Teddy Perkins treatment
for the big night.
When asked who it was, Atlanta cast members continually referred to Teddy as a real guy,
not merely a role that Glover played, keeping the weirdness alive for at least one more
night.
Much like the episode bears his name, it seems like the mystery of the Teddy Perkins character
eludes easy answers.